If a story is in you, it has to come out.  — William Faulkner

Woo-hoo! Welcome to my third attempt at National Novel Writing Month (which we “Wrimos” affectionately call NaNoWriMo)!

Yeah, I know: We’ve been here before. Me, promising to post daily updates of my progress. You, reading all two of the posts I actually get around to writing. Then…nothing.

Mostly because I’d stopped writing my novel.

In 2016, I announced The Demon Project. I made it about halfway through my 50,000-word target* for finishing before Thanksgiving travel completely upended my writing, and Jaqi and her Demon went into what appears to be semi-permanent hibernation. (I just read back through a few pages, and I’ll be finishing that novel someday. It’s funny stuff.)

Last year, 2017, I got no farther than announcing the title of my novel. But I’d just lost my best friend, a big, red Golden Retriever named Bodhi, and my energies were solely focused on things like getting out of bed in the morning, dressing myself, occasionally showering. Writing a novel was not a viable option.

So, here we are, at the end of 2018. I’ve announced my novel on the NaNoWriMo site, given it a title, written a (really bad) synopsis, and I’m off and writing. In just three days, I’ve managed to make the 5,000 word mark. And I’ve promised myself that, this year, I’m not only finishing, but I’m also doing everything differently. Everything.

So, for instance, I’m participating in social events, like write-ins at my favorite library branch — sitting alongside other Wrimos, all of us with our anti-social earbuds in and a soundtrack playing while we type furiously on our computers, not speaking but building the kind of collective creative energy usually reserved for group meditation sessions.

I’m also challenging myself to word-sprints, which means setting a timer and breaking the sound barrier with the speed of my typing as I race the clock to word-count goodness. And there are group sprints on my horizon, where a virtual herd of Wrimos race each other as well as the clock.

I plan to participate in workshops on finding an agent and how to self-publish a book at the Charlotte Mecklenburg Main Library.

And, too, I’m earning my badges (the whole affair is delightfully gamified), making donations, inviting others to write, cutting my fingernails short so their tapping doesn’t bother my fellow write-in Wrimos.

This year, I declared myself a Plantser (a combination of Planner and Pantser, as in “by-the-seat-of-my-pants”) and wrote some loose outlines, ideas for storylines, bits of dialogue — then went out and started writing whatever came to mind, leaving the planned bits for days when inspiration trickles instead of flows.

Oh, and I also declared myself a NaNo Rebel this year. As I started my Plantsing, I realized that — despite my efforts to write it as fiction — this is a story best told truthfully. So, this year’s “novel” will be a memoir. I have no idea what it will be after that because I’d originally planned for it to be a “choose your own path” digital experience, but I never quite got it off the ground. For one thing, I noticed there was an embarrassing lack of story in my story. Maybe forcing myself to compress my writing process during the next 30 days will provide the impetus to do something more…extraordinary…with it.

Then, again, maybe it will be extraordinary enough just as I write it.

Whatever happens with it, it needs to come out into the light before it eats me alive. Because that’s what stories do when you don’t let them out: They fester and churn and wake you up at night and sometimes eat your breakfast or your favorite dessert, just as you get ready to take the first bite.

Stories are like that, you know. As Faulkner says, “Better out than in.” (I might have paraphrased that a tad.)

In any case, I make no promises this year regarding keeping you updated. But don’t write me off just yet. Because you never know…

 

* Correction: I originally wrote that the “required” 30-day word count was 40,000 words. The target word count is 50,000 for the month in order to claim oneself a NaNoWriMo “winner.”